Donald Jr. Grants Interview To Anti-Semitic Hate Site

It’s no secret that Donald Trump isn’t even trying to broaden his support. Almost from the moment he took office and launched his reelection campaign, his efforts have been geared almost solely to the base. One glaring example of this–whenever Trump grants an interview, he speaks almost exclusively to right-wing outlets like Fox News, One America News, the Daily Caller, or Breitbart.

But one interview that took place raises some new questions about just how far the Trump campaign is willing to go in order to stir up the base. First Son Donald Trump Jr., saw fit to sit down with a religious right “news” organization that has lately taken an unmistakable turn toward anti-Semitism.

On Thursday night, Trump traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan–the scene of his final campaign rally in 2016. Most of the conversation on Friday has centered around Trump irately demanding that “little pencil-neck” Adam Schiff and his fellow Democrats stop their “ridiculous bullshit” about his 2016 campaign’s dealings with Russia.

But the most unnerving moment of that rally may have taken place away from the national cameras. While his father was taking a victory lap, Donald Jr. had a chat with Kerry Kinsey of TruNews, the hardcore fundamentalist “news” site operated by Rick Wiles. Watch here.

Junior boasted about how his father was going to “take care of middle America, flyover country”–and was keeping that promise. Junior also crowed that his father was able to win a lot even with the “fake news cloud” of the Russia investigation still hanging over him. He also denounced the investigation as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and had caused “irreparable damage” to the media’s standing.

All things considered, this was what you might expect when a Trump sits down for an interview with a right-wing outlet. The problem is that Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale allowed Donald Jr. agreed to sit down with this particular right-wing outlet. If Parscale and his staff had been paying any attention, they would see that Wiles and his crew have had no qualms about spewing anti-Semitic bile of the worst type.

For example, in 2017 Wiles had no qualms about taking a blatantly anti-Semitic cheap shot at Junior’s sister, Ivanka, and brother-in-law, Jared Kushner. He accused the couple, who are Modern Orthodox Jews, of surrounding Trump with “evil” Jewish mystics. More recently, he has claimed that Trump’s push to decriminalize homosexuality around the world is evidence that his administration is controlled by Jews. He has also accused Jews of “crapping on the country” by causing nearly every ill that has befallen this nation, and are therefore agents of the devil himself.

In other words, Wiles is openly trafficking in the oldest anti-Semitic trope in the book–that the Jews control everything, and are out to take over the world. And just in case Wiles hadn’t made himself clear on the matter, earlier this month he tried to argue that one of most noxious anti-Semitic tomes ever produced is accurate. Watch here.

Near the tail end of his March 15 broadcast, Wiles claimed that there’s some dispute about the provenance of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a 1901 document that supposedly spelled out a Jewish plan to take over the world. Wiles suggested that whoever wrote them was on to something, because “they obviously knew what was going to happen 100 years later.”

Never mind that the “Protocols” have long since been comprehensively exposed as a forgery. In 1921, The Times of London revealed that the “Protocols” had actually been concocted by the Tsaris Russian secret police after being plagiarized from a French satirical work. Nevertheless, they have been treated as gospel by anti-Semites to this day.

The fact that anyone would see fit to give succor to anti-Semitic bilge is outrageous enough. But Wiles holds himself out as a pastor; he helms the nondenominational charismatic Flowing Streams Church in Vero Beach, of which TruNews is a “ministry.” Anyone who has wondered how Richard Spencer or Andrew Anglin would sound in a pulpit, look no further.

All things considered, the most benign interpretation for TruNews getting an interview with Junior is that Parscale and his staff simply aren’t doing their jobs. A quick search on YouTube would have revealed that TruNews has devolved into an anti-Semitic cesspool. Any halfway competent campaign manager and campaign staffer would know that such an operation would be the last outlet that should be allowed within an area code of the son and de facto top surrogate of the president of the United States.

Frankly, we have to hope that this interview was merely the product of staggering incompetence on Parscale’s part. When incompetence is the best-case scenario, it should send a chill down the spine of any fair-minded American.

Darrell is a graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello, or donate on Patreon.